Snap Quiz: Which Stanley Kubrick characters seem to have a greater sense of humanity, exude a fuller emotional undercurrent and have been given more interesting or flavorful dialogue in their scenes — Tom Cruise‘s Dr. William Harford in Eyes Wide Shut or HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Answer: HAL 9000. The Swedish-born Marie Richardson is fascinating — no other performance she gave before or has given since will live as long in the public mind. But Cruise is a bloodless robot. He walks into a room and anesthetizes like an assassin, spouting tedious cliches and homilies. On the other hand EWS was obviously shot with an expectation that a fair-sized percentage of the audience would watch it within a 1.37:1 aspect ratio.